


the treadmill for his feet

by toujours_nigel



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Clubbing, Drugs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 15:13:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3295052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU Clubbing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the treadmill for his feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oonaseckar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/gifts).



> To the prompt: "Contemporary AU, Ralph and Sandy clubbing together, Ralph earnestly tries to dissuade Sandy from blowing a Republican senator in the gents. Or ICL undergrad Alan Turing. Or new Cameron acolyte Churchill. He tries. Or the other way around. Or he demonstrates how to do it right if you're going to do it at all. Then all three go out and have a bangin' night on the dancefloor!"
> 
> I'm not sure this fulfills any of those. Sorry, I... suck at clubbing-scenes.

_Just look out for him till I get back_ , Alec had said. _It won't be any trouble_ , Alec had said. _I think he's a bit nervous of you, really_ , Alec had said. _I'd do it if it was you got called away_ , Alec had said, because Alec was a right bastard who knew how to hit Ralph in the responsibility just right.

Well. Serve him right for being stupid and falling for that line. Always bloody did too, _esprit de corps_. Damn it all to hell. The beer was expensive and like camel piss, the people dancing too hard and too close, and the lights were too jarring and the music too fucking loud. And Alec’s little namesake had taken himself off to the loo two beers ago and never showed since.

Lord. He’d taken a little bag with him, hadn’t he? With Ralph’s luck he’d probably come back with his lashes curled and mascara-ed or his lips coloured or simply dusted all over with glitter. And then Alec would have to show up himself or get someone else to give his boyfriend a ride back home, because Ralph refused, flat out bloody refused to spend his leave making nice to Sandy all tricked out in make-up. Better to find out and make his excuses and be on his way. Worse. Maybe he’d want to sing. What the hell had possessed him anyway to show up in _Legends_ on Karaoke night? Forgotten, was the problem, and hadn’t liked to back out afterwards.

But Sandy hadn’t put his name down to perform, or wandered over to bid luck to any of the people who were to sing, or even into the Ladies’ which was serving as an impromptu green-room and from which he was mercilessly driven by two dragons in their mid-forties and stunning ball-gowns. That logically only left the Gents—the _other_ Gents—since it was too much to hope that the pissant little rat had wandered off to the basement, and couldn’t actually have gone away, Ralph having been cadged into taxi duties.

And there he fucking was, right on schedule, on his knees and nuzzling against some poor sod’s open fly and completely bloody oblivious even when Ralph came and leant on the wall right next to him and glared. His pupils were blown.

Well, he hadn’t been mad enough to wear anything to come out clubbing that couldn’t survive worse than whatever the bathroom floor could offer, though if Sandy upchucked he was sending Alec the bill, or very possibly the jeans. He shook Sandy and only got a vague smile in return, and had to hold him back by the neck to prevent a return to the other man’s cock. Which...

“You’re a mouthful, aren’t you?”

The man blushed, distinct even in the dim light. “I’ll just... I’ll zip up.”

Whatever moves he might have made in that direction were stopped by Sandy, who was clearly not far gone enough to not know what he wanted, though what he wanted might at this present state of coordination lead to choking. To repeated queries as to what he’d taken he opposed only giggling.

“Look, you, what’s your name?”

“Turing. Alan.”

Was that supposed to be  _Bond, James Bond_ or public school roll-call? Alec owed him a stiff double of the good whiskey he doled out on birthdays. Turing, Alan had an overhanging jaw, hair of some indeterminate dark shade, and a beautiful cock, and a pity to waste it. But however would they share him out, and there was Alec to think of, too, because those two had some sort of complicated arrangement Ralph had tuned out of the second paragraph in. Well, but something had to be done.

Ralph sat back on his heels, dragging Sandy by the wrists, resigned now to finding muck treaded into his jeans, and very possibly his shirt. Sandy, bracketed between his legs and further trapped by Ralph’s arms crossed across his chest, seemed momentarily content to nuzzle into his neck, making no discrimination between one piece of flesh and another. In any case one couldn’t do anything with him in such state, prior claims or otherwise.

“Did you give it to him?” Ralph asked, in an approximation of the voice that had held him in good stead the last ten years or so.

Turing, Alan—it had been roll-call after all—straightened and said in his own approximation of a sober schoolboy’s voice, just as though he wasn’t standing in the loo in a gay hotel with his dick hanging out his pants, “I wouldn’t. He was like this when I found him.”

In Ralph’s experience most people would do most things if they thought they’d get away with it. But one had to work with what was at hand, though that wasn’t perhaps the right analogy, since what was at hand would be perfect if taken in hand. He took Sandy’s wrists more securely against temptation, and said, “So it’s been forty minutes at least. He should be alright soon. In the meantime we’ll haul him back out and let him dance it off, or do the bloody karaoke if he wants. And put that away before you take someone’s eye out with it, will you?”

Turing, to give him his dues, put it away with great alacrity and winced only a little, considering, and came forward quite easily to lend Sandy a shoulder. Between them they got him up and out and poured into a booth, where he promptly went to sleep.

Ralph checked the time and his messages, and shot off an answer to Alec’s three, increasingly panicked. Probably he’d tried Sandy first.

“Should we have him checked out? In case it’s something harmful, I mean.”

“His boyfriend’ll be here in another fifteen,” Ralph said. “They’re both medical students, that’ll do. It’s probably just E.” He put a hand on Sandy’s throat just to check, but the pulse beat strongly under the skin. “Hullo, I’m Ralph Lanyon.”

“Alan Turing. But you know that.”

“I know that.” It had been some time since Ralph had got off in company, and that combined with the righteous conviction that Alec should have to deal with this mess entirely on his own—now that it seemed unlikely to be serious—to give his smile a perverse charm that Turing perceived at once. Good man. Encouraged, he went on, “His boyfriend will be here in another fifteen. Stay till then and I’ll see you home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I'm awful/unfair to Sandy, but sometimes I can't tell. My apologies if I am.


End file.
